


Fading Vacancy

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, M/M, None - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:50:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim looks back on a fateful day in the lives of himself and his guide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fading Vacancy

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose _technically_ this is an AU because it implicitly contradicts the events of TSbBS but I didn't want to label it as such since otherwise the presumed history is canon. Bear with me as I feign ignorance of the series finale... BE WARNED: This is _not_ a happy story. I want to throttle myself for writing it and you probably will too, but don't blame me - it was the Muse, man, the Muse. Thanks to Sweens and Grace for beta - I love you guys! I'm upside down! And finally... feedback, good or bad, is extremely welcome. :)

## Fading Vacancy

by The Sheriff

Author's disclaimer: Not mine... don't remind me. Oh and I'm making no money from this. Gee, thanks. You really know how to make a sheriff's day. ;)

* * *

Fading Vacancy  
by The Sheriff  
sheriff_the@hotmail.com 

The loft looked bare. Utterly vacant. And yet the living room was essentially unchanged: full of the same old furniture, arranged in the same old way - exactly as it had been for years, since before the phenomenon that was Blair Sandburg tore its way into my life. There were half as many CD's in the tower and a quarter as many books on the shelves but it was a superficial difference, really. A casual observer wouldn't even have noticed. But I did. Of _course_ I did. I don't know what surprised me more: the fact that I knew ahead of time how much I would notice or the fact that, despite bracing myself for the worst, the worst was much worse than I had anticipated and it didn't surprise me at all. Did that make any sense? Probably not, but it doesn't really matter. _I_ know what I meant. 

I did my best to make the living room look exactly the same as it always had - even went so far as to scatter a few magazines around the coffee table. But my attempt at casual messiness came across as painfully contrived and my hope that I could glance around the room and have it seem like nothing had changed was just that. Hope. I never actually believed it would happen. 

And sure enough, every time I look at the living room - even now, so many months later, my eyes glide ceaselessly past the couches and table and television to the windows on the far wall, where I can see the reflection of the french doors behind me, as if I were looking directly at them, and beyond those doors the persistent void of Sandburg's room. And the absence of the piles of papers and clothes and tribal death masks is almost blinding in its conspicuousness, like a flood light. So naturally I turn away, only to be reminded that I've been staring at a reflection all along and now I'm facing the real thing. That's usually when I decide to get out of the apartment for a while. 

But as soon as I get through the door, my hand goes instinctively to my pocket to check for my house keys, finding instead a small figurine. I take it out and roll it around in my hands for a while before pressing it into my right palm, absently stroking the dulled contour of its left arm with my thumb as I turn to head back into the loft. Then I sit down at the kitchen table and just stare at it, watching as the harsh light of the sixty watt bulb above my head melts effortlessly into its obsidian surface. 

This happens every time I start thinking about him; less frequently now than it did in those miserable early weeks of his absence, but it still happens. Enough that the figurine's shoulders are notably uneven now. Another few months of wearing the thing down and it'll have no left arm at all. Blair would call all this stuff a ritual and that's what it is I guess. And the ritual always takes me back to that very first day when the loft looked so empty, so unbearably vacant. 

We had boxed up all of his things and loaded them into the U-Haul trailer early in the day. His room was a mess, of course, still cluttered with dustballs and unwanted papers but I told him not to worry about it - that I would get around to cleaning it up after he had left. I did, naturally, but it took me a couple of weeks. Somehow, with all that garbage there the room didn't seem quite so ruefully uninhabited. 

But there I was, pacing around the oddly vacant living room, trying to get accustomed to the fact that that was how it was going to look from now on, and failing miserably. And then Blair Sandburg entered the loft for the last time. 

He looked the same as he always looked - baggy jeans, boots, loose flannel shirt, his hair going every which way - but he had changed. Despite himself, he had definitely changed. 

"Well, well, well," I said, not bothering to force a smile that I knew he would see through immediately, "if it isn't Doctor Sandburg." 

He flashed me a warm but undeniably weary smile. "Give me a break, Jim. You don't have to call academics 'Doctor' unless you're asking them for a job." 

We both chuckled quietly at that, a response that was pretty unusual for us, but then this was hardly the most usual of days. I leaned casually against the back of the sofa and he stood awkwardly by the still-open door, fidgeting as if wondering, for the first time in his life, what to do with his hands. He looked tired and even more crumpled than usual, having spent most of the morning saying goodbye to his friends and colleagues at the university. All of those handshakes and hugs and frantic 'one last kiss goodbye's had clearly worn him out. And who could blame him, really? He had a _lot_ of friends over there. 

The boys at the station had thrown him a small going-away party the night before and I had been startled to realize how few actual friends he had made at Cascade P.D. He had a few, of course, that would remember him for life - myself, Simon, Taggart... _maybe_ Conner. But even Brown and Rafe would eventually forget his effusive presence and infectious smile and in time he would become 'that kid that used to hang with Ellison \- you know, whatsisname. Hairboy.' Most of the guys at the party didn't even take the trouble to stop and wish him well on their way out. Blair had seemed much less bothered by it than I was, but then again I always was a lot more sensitive about that sort of thing. 

And at that moment, as I looked at him shifting from foot to foot before the backdrop of the open door, I was struck by the contrast between the Blair in front of me, exhausted from the affectionate attention that had been lavished upon him in his last visit to the Ranier campus, and the Blair of the previous night, smiling congenially at each law-enforcing guest as he departed, but so full of energy when the evening was over; still energetic enough that he prodded me into hitting a couple of our usual haunts 'one last time.' That's when I realized that the university had always been his true home, that no matter how much time he spent with me on the force, it was _my_ turf and he was just along for the ride. He was just studying my world, and in all those years with him I somehow lost sight of the fact that it really wasn't his world too. I guess that's why, in the end, he had to leave. 

When the revelation hit me, I had looked at him with... I don't know what kind of expression on my face. And he looked back at me and saw. Somehow he read exactly what I was thinking and he responded with a sort of sad smile that told me he had known it all along. That's when the ball of nerves solidified in my stomach. 

"So..." he said, glancing down to brush an imaginary speck of dust across the floor with his boot. 

"So..." I responded. Isn't that how you're always supposed to answer to 'So...?' 

"I guess this is it." He raised his eyebrows and rocked forward on his toes, a simple idiosyncracy that I was really going to miss. Even at the time, I knew I would miss it. 

"I guess so..." I squinted up at the ceiling and furrowed my brow as I turned my head to gaze out the window. 

"Think I'm ready for the East Coast?" His voice sounded nervous but hopeful. Upon the approval of his dissertation, he had been appointed an Assistant Professor at a small, private university out East. He called the school a 'potted ivy,' whatever the hell that means. I wonder if I was the only one who could tell how truly terrified he was. 

I paused for a moment, grimacing and biting the inside of my lip. "Chief, I think the real question is whether the East Coast is ready for _you_." I arched an eyebrow at him and he laughed, somewhat hesitantly, but more or less naturally. 

"Yeah..." he replied, still chuckling faintly as he dropped his eyes to the floor. A few silent moments drifted by before he suddenly caught his breath and I could hear his heartbeat hitch and then increase. He looked at me with earnest eyes. "You going to be okay?" 

He might have been asking about my senses or he might have been asking about something else. I picked the option with the easier answer. "Yeah," I said, exhaling sharply. "Yeah. I'll be fine." 

His eyes never broke contact with mine, but he nodded very slowly, taking a deep breath. "Yeah," he said. "You've been fine for quite a while now." 

I didn't know what to say, so I just leaned over the couch and straightened one of the throw pillows. 

He sighed and then stepped forward abruptly, pulling something out of his jeans pocket and pressing it into my hand. 

"Here. I wanted you to have this." 

I held the thing up to the light and gazed at it intently, willing myself to see it as Blair would see it, hoping that the act would help me better understand its significance to him... or perhaps my own. It was curious the way the ambient sunlight fell across it. I couldn't quite tell if it was deflecting the rays or absorbing them permanently into its depths. The object was carved obsidian, vaguely human in shape, but was also notably geometrical, seeming strangely self-encapsulating, moreso than a person-shaped statue had any right to be. The figure was entrancing, almost child-like in its construction, but it bore a subtle complexity, a feature which made its shape shift perceptibly as I turned it around in my hands. I glanced up at him. "What is it?" 

He stepped forward, gesturing at the object eagerly. "It's an idol. At least... well, kind of. It's a figurine of Tezcatlipoca." 

I looked at the statue and frowned. "You wanna run that by me again, Chief?" 

"Tezcatlipoca. He was an Aztec deity. Kind of a chaotic god, like Loki. He was the nemesis of Quetzlcoatl, the most revered of all Aztec gods, but he's not really evil per se. I like to think of him as misunderstood. Literally, his name means 'smoking mirror' so in that sense he's kind of the god of obfuscation..." 

"God of obfuscation?" I regarded first the figurine and then my friend, partner, roommate, guide, and all-around obfuscator of the last four years. "Thank you," I said, clearing my throat uncomfortably. "I love it." 

He nodded and grabbed his coat off of its hook. Shouldering his backpack, he expelled a reluctant but deliberate breath. "Well," he sighed, "guess I'd better be going." 

"Guess so." I nodded absently and he turned his back on the loft, stepping heavily across the threshold into the hallway. As if suddenly aware of the situation, I caught my breath. "Blair?" 

"Yes?" He turned around, a curious, expectant, almost _hopeful_ expression on his face. 

I looked at him for a moment and then shifted my gaze down to the figurine. "Thanks," I said, nodding curtly towards it as I hefted it in my hand. 

"Sure thing," he said, knitting his brow and frowning. "I'll be seeing you, Jim." 

"Yeah," I whispered as he closed the door behind him. "Be seeing you." 

And with that, Blair Sandburg walked out of my life, never knowing how much I loved him. 

Oh, I loved him all right. Not like a man loves his brother... or his wife... or even his army buddy that's saved his life a thousand times over. No. What I felt was something more profound than that. Something that transcends words and sex and friendship and pheromones and the million other things that people attribute love to. I just can't explain it. I suppose maybe that's why I know that it's real. 

And I still feel it, of course. I still feel it as strong as ever. But those moments when I end up slumped over the kitchen table, zoning on an obsidian sculpture of the god of obfuscation: they're becoming rarer and rarer. There's still a vacancy, but it's fading. It's fading and that sickens me, but I'm grateful for it at the same time. 

I've been gradually healing since the day he left; the day I just couldn't express the depth... the intensity... the _existence_ of my love. And he drove away not knowing. And now? Now I guess he never will. 

"Detach with love," he used to say. 

Chief, you have no fucking idea. 

* * *

End

 


End file.
